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Monday, March 22, 2010

A Virtual Retreat

Did you know that last Saturday, apart from being the first day of Spring, was International Quilt Day? What did you do to celebrate?

I had a very busy, quilt-y weekend for my celebration. On Friday I went to a Quilt Show with two friends. It was a beautiful show, and I'll be sharing some pictures in a future post.

Saturday the Liberated Quilters Yahoo Group had a Virtual Quilt Retreat. I retreated with them for the first time. I wasn't sure quite what to expect from a virtual retreat. I cleared my schedule, cleaned the quilt studio (that was a big deal!) and was ready to go. I warned DH that I wouldn't be available that day.

I decided that my Liberated Amish Challenge was the perfect project to work on for the retreat. On Saturday morning I had 8 9-Patches that I started with. By 2 pm, I had another 8 done! That's where I was in the picture up above.

I wasn't too thrilled with the 9-patches I had already done. They weren't wonky enough. So I got wonkier. I even tried an insert (bottom right block). Not too sure that the contrast is all that good on this one, but I'm not letting myself re-do any of these. None of these blocks have been trimmed to their final size yet. I needed to see what sizes they came out before I got too carried away with trimming.

I worked all day Saturday, with meal breaks, until about 10 pm that night. Sunday I got off to a slow start, but again, worked all day. By the time Sunday night rolled around, I had 34 9-patches done! DH was a real trooper....he made all the meals on Sunday so that I could get more sewing in. He's a great guy! I love that he's so supportive of my quilting.

I discovered an easy way to be wonky....just get confused and sew the rows back together wrong. That block still met the size requirements so I left it. One block didn't make the grade, and I ripped that one and re-sewed it. I started running out of fabric, and so started cutting the squares with scissors. The first two blocks I made that way worked great. The next 3....not so good. Two got put into the Parts Department and one got extra fabric sewn to it to be the right size. Can you find it in the above photo? I got pretty wonky by the end of the retreat, and I'm really happy with my blocks.

I finally couldn't stand waiting to see how they would look. I trimmed 4 blocks to their finished size and sewed a big block together. I like it! Just for reference, here's my Amish inspiration quilt.

I have 14 more 9-patches to make, and then I can start putting this quilt together. I'm hoping I won't lose too much momentum this week and that I can get them all done. That would be great!

I found two funny cat videos to share with you. This one shows a cat with a static cling problem, and this one shows a cat that's got a great dunk. I love a funny cat video....hope you do too.

One more thing to share.....

The Silly BooDilly is sharing some of her latest pincushions, that are related to her Work Quilts she's made lately. Go take a look....her stitching is beautiful and quite inspiring.

I forgot that Saturday was National Quilting Day. I was at our Quilting 101 workshop on Saturday. I didn't do any stitching, but I was doing quilty stuff all day, and attended a quilt show on Sunday. Does that count?